St. Junípero Serra

St. Junípero Serra was born Miquel Josep Serra i Ferrer on 24 November 1713 in the village of Petra on the island of Mallorca, Spain, and died on 28 August 1784 at Mission San Carlos Borromeo in Carmel, California. He entered the Franciscan Order as a young man, taking the name Junípero after a companion of St. Francis of Assisi, and became a gifted professor of philosophy and theology. In 1749 he left a comfortable academic career to become a missionary in New Spain, walking much of the way north on a leg that was permanently injured and pained him for the rest of his life.

Known as the Apostle of California, he founded the first nine of the twenty-one Spanish missions along the California coast, beginning with San Diego de Alcalá in 1769, and personally baptized and instructed thousands of Native Americans. Tireless despite chronic illness, he traveled thousands of miles on foot to defend the rights of the native peoples before the colonial authorities. He was canonized by Pope Francis on 23 September 2015 in Washington, D.C. — the first canonization ever to take place on United States soil.